Horse w/ half a skul face
Okay, here's an odd question: Is there anything in folklore about a horse with half it's face withoutskin? Like the side of it's face is only bone.

estrildeRegistered User(4/18/06 9:28 am)

Re: Horse w/ half a skul face
I've read about horses that were skeletons or had skulls for faces, and about horses that were only half a horse, but never the exact combination that you describe.

Where did you read about it? What context is this in?

LottiUnregistered User(4/19/06 4:29 pm)

Might be...
My memory is quite sketchy on this but I think I remember the half-horse-half-skeleton-thing from a book of fairy tales and myths from the Dolomite Mountains in northern Italy/ southern Austria. It might have been a mule instead of a horse, but I do not remember clearly. Unfortunately, the book is with my parents and I do not have access to it right now... The thing was either evil or a very bad omen, as I recall. It is all a bit hazy in my mind - but it definitely did ring a bell for me!

kristiwUnregistered User(4/19/06 5:19 pm)

water and horses
I'm probably way off the mark, but it reminds me of kelpies, which were definitely malevolent spirits and looked like horses. I don't recall them being half skeletal (other than perhaps skeletally thin in that malnourished faerie way), but I do recall they like lying in wait with their head only half out of the water, so they resemble a floating log.

On a completely random note, it just occurred to me how often horses are associated with water-- not just kelpies but Pegasus being the offspring of Poseidon, breaking waves being seen as charging horses, horse-headed water-spirits in pre-Buddhist myth (yakshi), and so forth. What's with that? Horses aren't especially aquatic animals, to my knowledge.